Diary

Returning refreshed from a most agreeable week some considerable distance (for once) from the Chiswick/Acton borders, our first call of the day is from none other than legendary CND campaigner Mr Bruce Kent, who has the temerity to offer a litre of good malt to anyone who can find a Labour minister willing to debate in public the replacement of Trident before March 14 (which is, you'll recall, the date when our elected representatives should endorse St Tony's far-sighted decision to blow £75bn of the nation's cash on a brand new ballistic missile system when most experts reckon the old one has years of life left in it yet, thank you). "I've written to all 23 cabinet members and only two have even acknowledged my letter," says Bruce. And that, say we, is two more than the ungrateful old sourpuss deserves!

We are appalled by yet more damning evidence of the scandalous lack of horses in our armed forces. In response to a most pertinent written question from John Maples MP (Stratford-upon-Avon, Con) demanding to know exactly "how many horses the Royal Air Force owns; and what the total annual cost of keeping them was in 2005-06", Derek Twigg, parliamentary under-secretary of state at the MoD, unblushingly responds: "The Royal Air Force does not own any horses." Can nothing be done to halt the decline of this once-great nation?

Wow. On the front of Tilda Easy Cook American Long Grain Rice packets is a label reading (and we quote): "Best Quality Easy Cook Long Grain (Non USA Origin). Please ignore all references to the USA." We're fairly confident there's a story in there somewhere, and if anyone can point us in its general direction we will, naturally, be grateful.

Spotted, sharing the top table last week at the Jewish Community Security Trust's annual dinner, our ever-dashing home sec, Dr John Reid; the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir Ian Blair; and St Tony's bouffant-haired bagman-in-chief, Lord Levy, currently on police bail and at the centre of an ongoing criminal investigation by Sir Ian's boys into those absurd cash-for-honours allegations. Regrettably, this doubtless convivial encounter obliged Sir Ian, in accordance with police regulations, to inform the Met Police Authority that he had consorted with a person on bail. The shame of it.

And so, inevitably, to Huddersfield, where shoppers at the excellent Milnsbridge branch of Somerfield's supermarket have, we learn, been much entertained of late by the strains, over the public address system, of that memorable (and, we dare say, inspiring) Morrissey/Marr composition, Shoplifters of the World Unite. Fine work!

Sadly, though, our brief absence from this page has done nothing to shake your irrational belief that this is a column that makes fun of people's names. So what, frankly, if the client services manager for F&C Fund Management Ltd is a Mr Phil Turnpenny; the spokesman for the Cumbria Ambulance Service is a Mr Rick Shaw; or if Drs Boyle and Burnham are in practice in Puddletown? And are we bothered that Natural England's species officer in Truro is Dr Jane Squirrell; that the senior customer services manager at the Leamington Spa branch of the HSBC bank is a Mr Nick Cashmore; or that the Council for Science and Technology boasts among its members a Dr Sue Ion? We are, most emphatically, not.

And thus spake St Tony in Sunday's Observer: "I could once have just stood up and been a touchy-feely politician people kind of liked and who looked a bit different from the normal. That wouldn't have got me home." Now perhaps, as so often, we've missed something, but isn't that more or less exactly what he did do?

At last! The Ham & High reports that as many as 150 killer terrapins (or "Terrorpins") living in Hampstead Heath ponds, many of which were dumped after being bought as pets during the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze of the 1990s, are to be trapped and deported to Italy. More tomorrow.